KiOR: The inside true story of a company gone wrong

“Not even close to what other people had done”

Just as the company was experiencing its spring 2008 management crisis, the results began to come in from the lab work in Valencia. The results were disappointing.

The pyrolysis testing results of the pretreated biomass samples were based on what has been described as “expensive catalyst (an inorganic synthetic material, and a proprietary to BIOeCON).”

Among the problems? ITQ’s data showed excessive amounts of water, coke, gas and char and a relatively small amount of bio-oil that had a low acidity. But there was more. KiOR technical personnel began to voice concerns about scaling up the process, and extra costs in removing the impregnated metals on the biomass, and associated environmental problems/costs to dispose waste byproducts, and contaminated water.

ITQ Valencia was reporting:

51% liquids — in all, 21.8% water and 29% organic liquids — 21% gas and 27% coke and char.

Results at this level are discouraging, scientists told The Digest, because of the high char, the high coke levels. Also, the oil content was low. The water content was described as “very high”, and in all, the results did not indicate “an economic process, and not even close to what other people had done.” Moreover, the organic liquids were expected to contain high oxygen levels, so that the actual fuel content would be much lower.